Book of Daniel - Ch. 4, Vs. 34-Ch. 5, Vs. 31 (05/19/2019)

that he has the cutoff of the lowest interest. Nothing yet. When Dallas, what's flooding look like?

I mean, around San Diego, when Dallas loses their flooding. That would be it. And the river eats that. You need a verbal?

We need a verbal. Are you good? Yeah, we should be recording it. OK. And the animals need to come out. They have to go somewhere.

The pigs, the deer, the plane. I've seen dead pigs on the highway.

I've just looked at it. I think that was a dead pig. He thinks he can see pigs.

No, he's not a pig. I didn't say that, but I think it's a long -legged serpent. A pig?

Is that it? No, he's not a pig. But I don't feel the grass next to him. The chicken's like eating my head.

OK, I guess we're ready to roll. We're actually running into Brother Raj's time.

And I know he's got a much better sermon than I have a lesson. So we want to get started so we can get through.

Let's begin with a word of prayer. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for providing for us this place where we can come together and study your

Holy Word. Thank you for the time that you give us and the Holy Spirit that you provide for us so that we may understand what you have written in your scripture.

But most of all, thank you for your Son, which you send into the world to provide a pathway for us to salvation.

Protect us and go with us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We are going to begin chapter 5 and deal with the handwriting on the wall.

But before we do that, I'd like to take a quick glance back at chapter 4, viewing

King Nebuchadnezzar and his final praise extolling the sovereignty of God, keeping this in mind.

This is a pagan king speaking of the absolute sovereignty of God.

But it is, I believe, a pagan king who has been granted salvation.

At least we know this. It is a pagan king who wrote part of the inspired scripture of God.

So we know at least that much about him. And here's what he says, starting at Daniel 4, verse 34.

Brother David reminded me of this yesterday. I read the passage, and he said, you know, I have quoted this a dozen times, just cut and paste into messages on the sovereignty of God.

We're going to come to one of the really strong statements of the sovereignty of God. But he said a lot of times, pastors cut and paste and don't look at the background, where this came from.

This came from a pagan king. This came from King Nebuchadnezzar. This came from a king that experienced living as an animal, but then regained his senses.

And this is what he said. And at the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes into heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me.

And I blessed the most high. And I praised and honored him that liveth forever and ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generations.

Last week, we spoke of that and said, that was a tacit admission by Nebuchadnezzar that when he built that statue to himself, that all gold from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet, implying that his kingdom would last forever, this is

Nebuchadnezzar coming to the understanding that there'll be an end to his kingdom. And all the inhabitants, this is the verse

I was getting to. And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. And he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

And none can stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou?

So he is absolutely, totally sovereign. And then going on, at the same time, my reason returned unto me.

And for the glory of my kingdom, and my honor and brightness returned unto me.

And my counselors and my lords sought unto me. And I was established in my kingdom.

And excellent majesty was added unto me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the king of heaven.

All whose works are true, are truth. And his ways, judgment.

And those that walk in pride, he is able to abase. He's saying,

I tried that. I tried viewing myself as on the equal with God. And I found where God put me.

God put me out in the fields, eating grass for seven years. Tended to only,

I believe, by the prophet Daniel. All the other counselors, I believe, abandoned him.

So when he says, my counselors and my lords sought me, that was a big change from what they had just done a few days earlier.

So the Lord, the high Lord of heaven, is able to abase who he wants to abase and to exalt who he wants to exalt.

Now that's the last word from Nebuchadnezzar. There is not another sentence ascribed to him in the scripture.

And there's not much more said about him. He's only mentioned three more times in the scripture.

And that will be in the chapter we're in today. And that with regard to what he has already done, he's going to do nothing new, nothing else to be done.

And so now we're going to get to the drunken party that leads to the handwriting on the wall.

Chapter five, verse one. Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand.

You know what's strange about this party? They're inside the walls of the city.

You know who's on the outside of the walls? The whole Persian army. And so what does he do?

He brings all of his leaders in and throws a party. So we need to keep in mind that at the time of this great feast,

Babylon was under siege by the middle Persian army. Belshazzar was apparently not afraid of the siege.

He was in fact overconfident. Babylon had impressive defenses and vast supplies.

What Belshazzar failed to recognize is the very thing that his grandfather had finally learned.

That was back in chapter four, verse 25. Till thou know, he's gonna wander about,

Nebuchadnezzar's gonna wander about eating grass till thou know that the

Most High reigneth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will.

At some point in time, Nebuchadnezzar realized that the reason he had his kingdom is because the

Most High God gave it to him and that the Most High God could take it away. Belshazzar, his grandson, should have seen that and should have recognized that and should have relied on the

Most High God for his protection. But instead of relying on the Most High God, he relied on the walls and the defenses left behind by Nebuchadnezzar.

Now, they're pretty impressive. Conservative calculations describe the defenses of the ancient city of Babylon like this.

The outer walls were 17 miles long, 17 miles around the city. That's two days' walk.

Well, I guess you could walk in one day if you walk fast. I couldn't. Two days' walk for me. The walls were 22 feet thick, 90 feet tall.

The outer walls also had guard towers on them, another 100 feet high, making the guard towers 190 feet high.

That's taller than these large pecan trees that we see and oak trees that we see out in the fields.

The city gates were made of bronze. But you know what you have to do with the gate?

You have to close it. In the drunken stupor or in the press of the parties, somebody left the gate open.

Well, the gate didn't do much good. Now, you know what you could have done? What they could have done, even had the

Persians gone under the river like they did and got into the inner, through the outer wall, they would have still been trapped in the inner wall had the gate been closed.

And now the whole army would have been between two walls. And it would be like shooting pigs in a cage.

That's how we hunt pigs in Texas. We shoot them in a cage. There was a system of inner and outer walls and moats around the wall that made the city very secure.

On top of that, the Euphrates River flowed under the walls of the city, providing an adequate water supply to outlast any siege.

They didn't count on the Persians diverting the river and the wall not extending all the way down to the bottom and therefore providing a path for the

Persians into the city. So all of that was left unaccounted for.

I guess there's a lesson here. If you're going to rely on your own devices for your sufficiency, you better not leave out anything important.

Verse two, Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father

Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple, which was in Jerusalem, that the king and his princes and his wives and his concubines might drink therein.

Remember I told you Nebuchadnezzar's gonna be mentioned three more times? Well, that's one of them. Now, in this passage and throughout this chapter, it's gonna refer to Nebuchadnezzar as the father of Belshazzar, but that's not quite true.

It was his grandfather, but the same word is used for grandfather and father. So really he's talking everywhere you see father, you can read in it grandfather.

Now for a long time, historians and archeologists knew that Nabonidus, not

Belshazzar, was recorded as the last king of Babylon. Belshazzar was

Nabonidus's eldest son. The solution to this so -called discrepancy was apparent when evidence was uncovered indicating not only

Belshazzar's association with Nabonidus on the throne, but also demonstrated that during the last part of his reign

Nabonidus didn't live in Babylon. He lived in Arabia and left the conduct of the kingdom of Babylon to his eldest son,

Belshazzar. There's no other mention of Belshazzar, the eldest son and co -regent with Nabonidus until the

Nabonidus cylinder was discovered during this century. And that cylinder is now on display in the

British Museum for all of you guys that can read Babylonian. According to the

Babylonian records, Belshazzar became co -regent in the third year of Nabonidus's reign and continued in that capacity until the fall of Babylon about six years later.

Okay, back to the Bible. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was in Jerusalem and the king and his princes and his wives and his concubines drank in them.

They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.

I don't know if they'd gotten in too much trouble, if they'd simply drunk wine out of the vessels, but they didn't stop there.

What they did was in their drunken stupor, they praised the gods of gold and of silver and of brass and of iron and of wood and of stone, gods that they with their own hands made themselves.

We talked about that the other day when we talked about the idea of my God. My God wouldn't do that.

My God wouldn't do this. You're right, your God wouldn't. Not the God that you made, but the

God that made you will do what he pleases. And that is what

Nebuchadnezzar recognized. The God that made him could do what he wanted to and there was nobody that could say, what doest thou?

Well, why they did this was an exercise designed to boost morale.

Remember, they're under siege. He's got all these leaders there and what they're doing is they're praising their gods.

Hopefully, to give confidence to them, to show one another that they had nothing to fear from the siege.

It doesn't matter that the whole Persian army is out there. We've got our 90 foot tall wall, 22 feet thick, and we've got supplies to last for years and water enough to last forever.

We can wait until all the people seizing us grow old and die. We don't need to come out for anything.

We are self -sufficient. We are reliant on no one except ourselves. In today's vernacular, at least in my vernacular, we would describe them as whistling through the graveyard.

Have you ever heard that? That's an old saying. Mrs. Mitchell and I remember that.

Whistling through the graveyard. That's when you walk down past the graveyard and to show how brave you are that you're not worried about the soldiers and the spooks, you whistle as you go by.

You whistle to calm your nerves. You whistle to calm your nerves. Well, that's what they were doing.

They were whistling to calm their nerves. Okay, so what happens? Verse five. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace.

And the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. So it turns out that this party, that this praising of the gods of stone and gold and wood was not such a good move.

God intervened and what was intended to be a confidence builder, in fact, destroyed whatever confidence they might have had.

So here's what he said about the king. Then the king's countenance changed. Can you imagine what you would do if you were sitting in their party drinking and boozing it up and praising false gods and you looked up and you saw a hand writing on the wall and it wrote four words and you didn't understand any of them?

His countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him. One commentator said he didn't understand why his thoughts would trouble him if he didn't know what the writing said.

Okay. He knew enough to know that that was out of the ordinary.

He knew enough to know that they were worshiping false gods and this was probably not one of them.

It was time to quit whistling and start running. His thoughts were troubled so that the joints of his loins were loosened and his knees smoked one against the other.

You can see his knees banging together. Knees knocking. He's not so confident now, is he?

So what does he do? He called, he cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the

Chaldeans and the soothsayers and the king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon, whosoever shall read this writing and show me the interpretation thereof shall be clothed with scarlet and have a chain of gold about his neck and shall be the third ruler of the kingdom.

Now, I got a question for you. Why did he offer him the third kingdom, the third ruler in the kingdom?

Why not the second? Why not put him number two? Because he was number two.

His father was the king. He was number two. The highest thing he had to offer was number three.

So if people had been reading this carefully, they would have recognized that there was something strange about him offering the number two.

When Joseph was put in charge of Egypt, what position was he given?

Well, number two. Because the Pharaoh was number one and Joseph was number two.

Well, Belshazzar can't give him number two. That's him. So all he can give him is number three. Then came in all the king's wise men, but they could not read the writing nor make known unto the king the interpretation thereof.

Now, you notice this is a little bit different. They could see the writing. It was not like the first dream of Nebuchadnezzar when he had the dream and he wouldn't tell them what it was to test them.

Or even like the second dream of Nebuchadnezzar when he dreamed the dream and told them the dream and they still couldn't interpret it or maybe they could, but they were afraid to tell him.

Even Daniel was a little bit reluctant to tell him. And the king said, no, go ahead and tell me. They could see the writing.

And like the king, they did not know what it meant. Now, if Belshazzar was upset before, now he's even more upset.

So now he says, then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled and his countenance changed in him.

So he's even more unhappy. And his lords were astonished.

Now they are frightened too. Now he's even more frightened than he was when he first saw the hand writing on the wall.

Just a hand writing on the wall. It'd be bad enough if you saw a man writing on the wall, but just the hand.

Clearly something important has happened, but no one knows what it is. Well, almost no one.

There's one who knows, or will know soon, and another one who knows, who knows?

That would be the queen. Now, the queen may have been one of Nebuchadnezzar's wives, or it could have been one of his daughters and Belshazzar's mother.

That would have made Belshazzar have to marry his at least half sister. But that wasn't unusual in the

Babylonian culture. After all, remember how Abraham identified

Sarah, his wife? Remember, as his sister.

Was he lying? Well, sorta. He wasn't conveying the truth.

What he said was exactly accurate. She was his half sister, but she was also his wife.

And he was obscuring the fact that she was his wife by telling the king that that she was his sister.

Anyhow. Now, the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet house.

We talked about this last night, the family, and decided that it wasn't by the volume of the words.

It was probably by the lack of them. Understand what's going on here.

There is a drunken brawl going on, a drunken party. And they see the handwriting on the wall.

I suspect, Clarence said this, he says, if you've ever been on an airplane, when they announce to buckle up your seatbelts that a big storm is coming in, and there's a thought that the plane might crash, you can hear a pin drop.

Not loud, quiet. But whether she came in from the outside because of the sudden quietness, or because of the sudden murmuring of a different kind, she came in to the banquet house by reason of the words of the king and his lord.

And the queen spake and said, O king, live forever. Let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor thy countenance be changed.

Now, if this is his mother, if this is Belshazzar's mother, then that gives even more softness to the question, to the statement.

O king, live forever. Let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed.

There is a man in the kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods.

And in the days of thy father, grandfather, light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of gods was found in him.

Whom the king Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, the king, I say, thy father, made master of the magicians, astrologers,

Chaldeans and soothsayers. For as much as an excellent spirit of knowledge and understanding, interpreting of dreams and showing of hard sentences and dissolving of doubts were found in this same

Daniel. Now, that's interesting. How did she identify Daniel? What did she call him?

She called him Daniel. What did Nebuchadnezzar call him?

Belshazzar. That was his Babylonian name given to him.

She called him Daniel, whom the king named

Belshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show thee interpretation.

So the king sends for Daniel. Then was

Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king, my father, brought out of Juri?

I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee.

And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me that they should read this writing and make known unto me the interpretation thereof.

But they could not show the interpretation of the thing. So we've been here before.

The Chaldeans, the soothsayers, the wise men called in and unable to satisfy.

And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations and dissolve doubts.

Now if thou canst read the writing and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet and have a chain of gold about thy neck and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.

So we make them the same offering he made the Chaldeans. So what did he say?

What did Daniel say to that? Nah. And Daniel answered and said before the king, let thy gifts be to thyself and give the rewards to another.

Yet I will read the writing unto the king and make known unto him the interpretation.

What he said was, keep your gifts, give your reward to someone else, but I will read and interpret the writing.

But before he does that, he's gonna tell him something else. He doesn't say this, but I would have if I'd have said it.

But first you need to understand this. Okay, Brother Ron did make it.

O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar, thy father, a kingdom and majesty and glory and honor.

And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him.

Whom he would, he slew. And whom he would keep alive, he kept alive.

And whom he would set up and whom he would, he put down.

He was a man greatly feared. He was able to do just about anything and everything that he wished to do.

That's what Daniel is telling Belshazzar that he should have recognized about his father,

Nebuchadnezzar. He was a man greatly feared. He was able to do just about anything he wanted to do.

But when his heart was lifted up and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne and they took his glory from him.

And he was driven from the sons of men. And his heart was made like the beast. And his dwelling was with the wild asses.

And they fed him with the grass like oxen. And his body was wet with the dew of heaven till he knew that the most high

God ruleth in the kingdom of men and that he appointed over it whomsoever he will.

And thou, his son, old Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all of this.

He was there to see it happen. He was there to see his grandfather as the primary ruler of the world.

He was there to see his grandfather brought down and live in the field for seven years. He was there to see his grandfather put back into power.

You knew all of this, Daniel said, and you learned nothing. But thou hast lifted up thyself against the

Lord of heaven, Yahweh, a name that came to be so sacred to the

Jews that they wouldn't say it. And they have brought the vessels of his home, of his house, that's

God's house, before thee, and thou and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines have drunk wine in them.

And thou hast praised the gods of silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know.

And the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all of thy ways, thou hast not glorified.

Rather than praise this God, you chose to praise the

God of your own making. Now, we're running almost on time, so I'm going to do a little divergence here and go to a passage that we've all memorized,

I know. 2 Timothy 3 .16, I'm going to go there because I'm going to tell you something what this lesson is telling us.

2 Timothy 3 .16 says, all scripture, that would include this passage, is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.

What we need to do is be careful that we praise the most high

God of heaven, not a God of our own making. It's too easy to say, my

God would not do this, and my God would not do that, and my

God would, and my God would not, and my God could, and my God could not, and worship my

God. The God that I made. What we need to do is make certain that we're worshiping the

God that made us, not the God that we made. Now, he's going to tell

Belshazzar, after he's properly rebuked him, he's going to tell him the interpretation.

Then the part of the hand, the part of the hand that you saw writing on the wall, was sent from him.

And this writing was written. So when you saw that hand writing on the wall, you saw

God's hand writing on the wall. And this is the writing that was written.

Mene, mene, tekel, aparshan. And now for the interpretation.

This is the interpretation. Mene means, God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it.

Virgil, how many times did it say mene? Two.

Two times. Verse 25, it says it two times. Mene, mene, back to back. What that usually means is emphasis.

What's it emphasizing? God has numbered thy kingdom and finished it.

Double for emphasis. Your kingdom is over and it's over now.

Tekel. There are weighed in the balances and are found wanting.

God has numbered your kingdom and ended it. You are weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Perez. Now that's a little bit different word than back in verse 25. In verse 25, the word was, as best

I can pronounce it, uparshan. And this one was

Perez. Well, the question, would that have been a mistake? Well, there are no mistakes in the

Bible. Perez, the kingdom is divided and given to the

Medes and the Persians. Parsian, in verse 25, is the plural of Perez here.

So in 28, it was one thing.

In 25, it emphasized two things. That there was, it was divided into two pieces.

Emphasizing the parts of the division. That part was given to the Medes and part to the

Persians. The you prefix on the word Parsian has the same idea that and has in English.

So if you read that a little bit differently, you would read it as mene, mene, tekel, and Parson.

Your kingdom has been numbered. You have been weighed and found wanted. And your kingdom is divided into two pieces.

That's the English gist of what is written there. Okay, so that's it.

Daniel has now interpreted the writing. Now, King Belshazzar does something that really surprises me.

Then commanded Belshazzar and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, just like he promised. And put a chain of gold about his neck and made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler of the kingdom.

Now, here's what I believe. I don't believe it's quite sunk in to Belshazzar that his kingdom is over.

Even though Daniel just told him your kingdom is over and it's over now. That's what the handwriting says.

King Belshazzar, I can tell you that right now just outside the wall are in the center of the city are the

Persians. And in just a minute, they're going to come through the door and you're going to be killed. He didn't tell him all that, but that was what's going on.

But still, his actions surprised me. What he received was not a favorable interpretation.

He didn't say like the mother did. Old King lived forever. What he said was, your days are numbered.

The jig is up. Yes, sir. I don't know.

I hadn't thought about that. And I'm not 100 % sure that he went to bed. All I know is that he was very shortly thereafter taken.

No, I do not think that he understood quite that his kingdom was over.

Maybe he has seen a lot of weird and bizarre things. But what surprised me was that in spite of the fact that the interpretation was not favorable and included a severe rebuke,

Belshazzar gave him the gifts anyhow for whatever they were worth.

And that night was Belshazzar the king of the

Chaldeans slain. So the rewards that he offered him were meaningless.

And Darius the Median took the kingdom being about three score and two years old.

So Darius the Median was 62 at the time. There's some debate about who that Darius is,

Darius the Median. There's no record of there ever being a... The record is that Cyrus was the king.

In other places, Cyrus is the king. This may be Cyrus and Darius may be a title or this may be one of the generals that are overseeing

Babylon while Cyrus is completing his conquest. I don't know about that.

But I do know that the Babylonian empire is now over.

By the way, the walls are intact. The city was not destroyed. It's not the fall of Babylon described as the fall of the great

Babylon revelation. It's a different time, a different destruction. But Babylon is no more.

And that's the end of chapter four. Chapter five was five, end of chapter five.

And we'll begin chapter six next time with Darius the Median and Daniel and the lion then.

What did you say? Nabonidus.

I will as soon as I get back to where I got it spelled. I cut and paste.

It's a long way back there. It was only a set of cylinders called the

Nabonidus cylinder that's on display in the British Museum. I didn't go there and see it.

I just read about it. No, no, but I don't know that you'd even know about the existence of Nabonidus just by reading the

Bible. I don't think, brother, you're right.

No, just just to let just to let the scripture be reinforced by history.

What happens is people try to disprove the Bible by saying the

Bible says things that are not historically accurate. And most of these, when you track them down, they were so accurate.

For example, him offering the third position to Daniel was a reflection of just how accurate the

Bible was that the Bible knew that that that Belshazzar was the number two ruler and that his father was beyond that was number one.

You know, even saying that father, grandfather, it changed nothing.

It did not change anything. You're exactly right. He saw Nebuchadnezzar go through what

Nebuchadnezzar went through, or if he didn't see it with his own eyes, at least he heard about it.

And he should have known. He should have known that there was a God capable of disciplining

Nebuchadnezzar and taking him out of his power and could do the same for him and did it for the same reason.

Anything else? Pride, pride for Nebuchadnezzar, pride and worship of false gods for Belshazzar.

Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all our many blessings. Bless us and keep us and go through the day to day.

Protect us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Well, Ron, I read your

I read your email message and and told everybody that you were not coming.

No, I'll be here. I just have a very rough morning. I didn't want you to think I was just blowing you off.

Oh, that's no problem. I know how. No, I got up.

I have sciatica in both hips now and I couldn't even hardly bend over or hop.

I got up and took several aspirin and it helped enough.

I said, but get here. Hello, prettiness. How you doing? Well, yeah. I just didn't want you to think that we didn't care.

We do care very well. I know. I know. Somebody said they saw you the other day and that you look like you were feeling bad.

And I said, well, you know, I saw him at the grocery store. I think yesterday. Yeah. And I said, you look you look fine to me.

Yeah. But I'm not very perceptive. Well, it's just that I think with all the storms, the rain and the high guys, the high and low pressure, you know, it's just I'll bet.

I'll bet it does. I bet that has. I've had 17 operations with UPS, all joint related.

So and when things act up, things act up. So, you know.

Well, I would stay away from that UPS stuff. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

I'm gonna put this up here and get your desk out of your way. Okay. Oh, man.